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Identifiers Used in the Music Industry

2008; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.25101/8.3

1559-7334

Serona Elton,

Music and Audio Processing

Imagine this scenario: Mary meets someone whose name sounds like John Smith.At the end of the encounter, he tells her to give him a call; he does not give his telephone number.Consider the challenges Mary would face trying to look up John's phone number.If she searched by the name John Smith she would likely fi nd a staggeringly large number of possibilities.And the list might not even include the number she needs if it turns out his name is spelled Jon Smith.If he had given her his telephone number, the time wasted trying to fi nd it could have been avoided and the chances that she would reach him, rather than someone else with the same name, would be very high.The same sorts of challenges present themselves when applied to music rather than people.Imagine trying to look up information about a song titled Always and Forever.While the list of songs with this title is shorter than the list of possible phone numbers for John Smith, it is no less daunting; and the chance of selecting the wrong one is signifi cant.The music industry's way of addressing this problem is through the implementation of numerous music identifi ers.The average person uses identifi ers every day without realizing it.Telephone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, and passport numbers are just a few examples.An identifi er is an "unambiguous string denoting an entity" (Paskin 2003, 28).In other words, an identifi er is a set of numbers or letters, or a combination of both, used to uniquely identify something.Identifi cation numbers have become more and more important as we deal with greater volumes of information and we move from a society where transactions occur face-to-face to one where they occur computer-to-computer.As transactions involving music, both as intangible intellectual property (e.g., musical compositions and sound recordings) and as commercial products (e.g., CDs and singletrack downloads), move from being paper-based to EDI-based (electronic data interchange), the need for identifi ers in the music industry has grown.In response to this need, a number of different identifi ers have been created such as the ISWC, ISRC, GRid, ISMN, and GTIN.For individuals and companies involved in licensing or selling music, it is important to be-